It was the second day of training in a row and I don’t think my ‘older‘ body can handle such training intensity! I thought I was tired after a long day of jumping with the Saturday Community [1] yesterday. So much so that I felt quite ill when I got home. Yet today, I was out at it again, adding to the torture of pulled muscles and DOMs. Adam and myself had been talking about venturing to a newer spot, such as the Carlton suburbs again. This was confirmed when Michael wanted to be out for the adventure too. Seeing as he had missed the main jam yesterday due to feeling the effects of gym from Friday, combined with a night out on the town…
It was a spot I had thoroughly enjoyed [2] last time we were there. We parked up, not knowing that some of the spots were numbered and no doubt for the residents who lived there, rather than for general parking use. It was a good day for Michael, who was sprightly and ready to jump! I was really struggling to do anything, my hamstrings were tight and my glutes hurt too. My jumping ability was REALLY limited, too much for me to properly appreciate the training location. I’m not too sure why I didn’t take many photos from this day, I was most likely not in the mood and/or we explored more than doing anything impressive and worthy of images.
After a brief session, we needed a shop for food and drink supplies. The plan was to stop off at one and then train at the golf course in Arnold. It used to, from memory have some nice spots and it had been absolute years since I last visited them! Once in the car park, Michael and Ben said they had seen a Co-op on the way over, so they were both going to walk there. Sceptical, Adam and myself drove on a little adventure. We sadly came to a (since long) closed down shop I thought was still open, then we had to drive to a Tesco instead. They were right and had found the Co-op, but we had already committed to going elsewhere, even if we had to drive further away to get to a shop after the minor detour…
In retrospect, I think the past training sessions in Arnold [3] [4] [5] were more successful and vivid at that time, playing them back better in my mind. Rose tinted glasses and all that! I say this, because as we walked through the golf course there wasn’t much that enticed us to train. Some jumping on the rock pool area, but it wasn’t as enjoyable or progressing as it felt back in the day. Don’t get me wrong, it was fun, but it wasn’t as I envisioned. We slowly made our way over to the pine tree which always got climbed when we trained there. Michael was up to the top, while Adam and Ben vaulted a lower branch, trying some flow and timing themselves getting around the tree.
We moved down to the line of rocks near a block of flats, jumping along them, but again it felt a bit of a wasted trip. Perhaps we should have just gone back to the park? There was one last stop I wanted to do before, seeing as Arnold town centre always had better parkour spots to jump on. We made our way past the swimming bathes, which was partly blocked off for building work. One spot already lost, for now. There were some cool (new) concrete blocks for standing and running precisions at the front of the library. Across the road there was what used to be called ‘cat alley’ and great for training…
The only difference? Now was it was all blocked off with metal fences, making the walls inaccessible. Even the small wall at the top, which we used as a big precision jump was partly demolished now as well! As I walked to the other spots, they were either too big a movements, demolished or shrubbery too overgrown to train on. Ugh, another wasted journey! We came to a spot where there was a railing and two small walls. Which can be seen [6] within that old blog entry. After some jumps we ended up going back to the park, doing as many of the same exercise as possible, until our legs fell off or we crumpled each time we landed a move.
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